GENIUS FORUMS

G_d only knows where I picked this up, but maybe someone can confirm or deny it: purportedly Darwin observed that smart people would tend to mate with smart people, and dumb people with fellow dullards, and that eventually humanity would diverge into two distinct subspecies, the smarties and the du...

I consider this to be a very poor teaching. If you tell a bunch of people whose minds are still very deluded and riddled with mental blocks, even though they have made some interesting altered states and insights into Reality, that they are already enlightened and only have to put an end to their d...

The Buddha taught heedfulness, not method which shapes outcome. The Buddha taught a lot of things, i.e. different methods. It's also useful to remember that 'The Buddha' was not the only buddha. If he were, it would certainly be a lousy testament to the effectiveness of his teachings. One last poin...

[Hakuin's] main criticism of the Buddhism around him was its dismissal of the intellectual aspects of the path in favour of trying to make the mind as blank as possible in the mistaken belief that we are already enlightened and there is essentially nothing to do. This has always been a very common ...

Housewives don't get paid, see. Traditionally the man of the house is in control of the finances so the housewife was more like a servant or child than an independent adult. At least that is the feminist argument. But I agree with you that we are now seeing a ridiculous situation where people pay ot...

Passthrough, I had the good fortune to be raised in a non-religious family, so I don't know much at all about Jewish theology. Certainly you don't hear much about an afterlife in Judaism except in the more mystical strains like Kabbalah. I think the idea is more as it was in the Old Testament when y...

Sue I wonder if you think men habitually swoop down to eviscerate someone who may seem vulnerable or confused. I thought Elizabeth appreciated Scott's honesty in admitting he made a mistake, which is actually pretty unusual for someone who's been telling the other person she's stupid & can't thi...

Hi Dan I thought I'd reply to some of what you wrote. I don't think any qualifiers are necessary when speaking about men and women. "Most" is too nebulous and vague to mean anything; "all" isn't accurate because one cannot know what the situation is for all women. I think all one...

Dan Rowden wrote:I'll give a fullsome response to Shardrol's post if she can give me reason to believe I've never previously done so.....

Alas, I cannot.

Nick thinks I'm just picking nits Picking nits about my use of generalisations yes, not the ideals themselves. With the nature of our world being as comlplex as it is, if nobody ever used generalisations we would never accomplish anything, and the same applies with philosophy. For the last time, I ...

I love it when people passionately speak from the heart. Why do you love it -- or were you being facetious? How do you distinguish passion from dualistic deluded emotion? Shardrol: If someone made some generalization about 'all men' & a man felt it didn't apply to him, he'd just go on about his...

I'm going to try to make time to reply to some of the replies to my post. Next, myself would not be as generous as you in crediting these irrationalities to "dishonesty." Such a term implies that the purveyors of these mushy dictums are conscious of the truth and not using it. Well for exa...

I say that a person is a genius to the degree that they speak the truth. Both Nietzsche and to a lesser degree Schopenhauer were exceptional in this regard, and that is why they will be remembered forever. They are remembered because of their uncanny ability bring truth to the fore. If unenlightene...

If I tickled every one of you people, how many could withstand the urge to smile? I know most of you would certainly give your best effort in resisting the urge. I'm sure there is a planet somewhere where that suppression is commendable. But has suppression changed anything? Is there still a prefer...

The Dalai Lama isn't really equivalent to the Pope since Buddhism (particularly Tibetan Buddhism) is not a monolithic organization with a specific head man in the style of Roman Catholicism. However I doubt that he minds the fact that most people in the world, & possibly even most practitioners ...

Shardrol wrote: Sue: And what about the line in the video where he says that monkeys are “cursed with consciousness” - what the...? That's known as 'irony'. What do you think the film was about? Well if you want to look at it seriously I think the message of the film was a bit contradictory. On...

I once found an online IQ test that seemed to have a lot of questions, pages after pages. I answered them for a while then eventually got tired of it & gave up -- at which point the website informed me of my IQ, which was pretty low. It seems that the longer it took you to realize that the test ...

I just had a flash of insight that cosmic_prostitute must be the reincarnation of Leo Bartoli!
.

sue hindmarsh wrote:And what about the line in the video where he says that monkeys are “cursed with consciousness” - what the...?

That's known as 'irony'.
.

Obviously someone wouldn’t go to jail for eating a cookie, however you could implement laws that stipulated if a grocery store is caught selling cookies then they would receive large fines or lose their license temporarily. And a government could justify this law based on reliable information pro...

If all the doctors united with nutritionists and put strong pressure on the governments to change nutrition laws then things would happen. Do you really want governments deciding what kind of food everyone should eat & enforcing this? Eat a cookie, go to jail? Do you want to live in a world whe...

.
The way I remember it it was Diogenes & he was looking for an honest man.
.

Emma: completely emptying your mind and dying to the world takes you to an emptiness which becomes loneliness over time Shardrol: How do you know this? Have you actually emptied your mind & died to the world? Even if you had, how could you be sure that the experience would be the same for every...

completely emptying your mind and dying to the world takes you to an emptiness which becomes loneliness over time How do you know this? Have you actually emptied your mind & died to the world? Even if you had, how could you be sure that the experience would be the same for everyone? O Tedium. .

When I first came to this forum (something like 8 years ago) I was appalled at what appeared to me then as the misogyny of the moderators. They wrote their usual generalizations about women & I naturally assumed, as just about anyone would, that they were talking about 'female humans' rather tha...